Down at the Bottom
by heyshalina
Summary: Throughout my life, I was brought down. Brought down in society, self-worth, and chance. I was never given the chance to die easily, because an Avox never gets to choose. Written for the Starvation Forum's Monthly One-shot Challenge.


**Hey. This is written for the Starvation Forum Monthly One-Shot Challenge. The prompt this month is Five. I hope you like it. Reviews are always welcome, of course. I had a ton of ideas running through my head when I decided to write for this, but this is the story that came out on paper. Thanks.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games, nor any of the characters and so on associated with the book.**

* * *

One.

My name is Lavinia. I used to be happy. Now I am counting the doors of death. Darius is beside me, holding me as I shake in fear. I do not cry anymore. It just sounds like death itself. I wish everything, if anything, had stayed the same, and I could have died normally, peacefully even, after the strained days of servitude I had endured for years still in the Capitol. Worked it out so that I could get away from the death of the Hunger Games. But no. Of course that could never happen.

Two.

My name is Lavinia. I used to have a home. I blame my parents for what happened to me. They were stupid, defied the Capitol when they knew they would be punished. They were silently executed, and we lived at home for some time before we had to run. He looked up to me. I looked down on myself. We only had one backpack full of bread and fruit, with some sweets. I was an idiot to bring him with me into the wilderness. But how could I not, when I felt he would be killed? It didn't matter. It never matters. We had run so far, ran out of food, when I saw her. I knew it was over the minute I spotted the glint in the boy's eyes beside her. The spear came down and hit him, and I screamed. He was _gone_, just like that. Just like everything else. The net fell upon me, scooping me up toward hell. They couldn't have killed me with a spear like they did to him. That would have been too forgiving. Too easy. Too nice. And we all know that is the one thing the Capitol is not.

Three.

My name is Lavinia. I used to be able to sing. Now I cannot utter a word, because of what they did to me. I was not tortured, and yet I was hurt. I was kept in that net for hours, without any attention except for being thrown in a cage. Then I was dragged through an underground facility with two other people, all scared for our lives. It was the hell of Panem, the horrid side of the great Capitol. We didn't speak. I would have, if I knew that was the last time I would be able to. Weak, feeble strings of song fluttered in my brain, a lullaby my mother used to sing to me, before she betrayed me and left us there to die. She had killed him. She had left me as good as dead. The other two shared glances with me as I was shoved into a sterile room. I never saw them again. I would never again see the woman with dark curly hair or the unshaven man with green eyes that pleaded too a girl too young. I was forced onto a table and injected. I would have fought, resisted in any way possible if I knew what was going to happen. That's the kind of girl I am. But fate had its twisted plan for me, and I was subject to the suffering. There was nothing wrong with the operation. Of course there wasn't. Life wouldn't let there to be too much antiseptic to kill me. Wouldn't let the evil doctors cut my throat until I bled out unconsciously. Because that would just be unfair.

Four.

My name is Lavinia. I used to be respected. I am spit upon by the high held esteemed citizens of the Capitol, born into outrageous fashion and big hair, never hungry and always happy. Taught to think of themselves better than everyone else, to not question where their servants came from, to think of murder like a sport. While I was forcedly taught to think nothing, do nothing without being told, make no noise. Ever. That I was below everything in the world, the slime on the bottom of the ugliest snail, the dreg of society. An…_Avox_. I served the tributes for years, three in fact. Six tributes. All of them died. And you know what? I _envied_ them. I wanted to die, I admit it. To talk to him again, to see his little smile when he told a joke. To scold my parents but then forgive them, living the new life of death. But instead I was sentenced to years of solitude, servitude, and loneliness. Down at the bottom. I was never promoted, never a step closer to the people who ruined my life. Instead I served the children who were considered the lowest of all the people throughout Panem. Other than me, of course. So it fit. District Twelve. I always thought the name was familiar. The tributes were always starved animals with no means of defensive skills whatsoever. They were never bloodthirsty, only scared. I wanted to be moved to District Two, which despite all their glory was the least wanted District among all the Avoxes. I wanted to be moved there because their tributes were always full of bloodlust, and every few years an Avox was hurt. I didn't want to be killed by some volunteer tribute that had been training with blades their whole life, but being close to the prized tributes was being close to _them_. But of course, I was never moved. They wouldn't be so kind as to let a tribute kill their Avox, or let me commit more treason. Of course they wouldn't. I was just within their savage reach.

Five.

My name is Lavinia. I used to be safe. No matter what, I guess I was always safe in a way. Until I saw her again. The spark in her eyes, the lust when she looked at him. He was different than the other boy, from before. He was kinder, softer, and gentler. He talked to me, but she did too. But I should have warned him when he vented his feelings as I worked. That love was not allowed in the game of death. That it would get everyone killed in the end. His love was real. Hers, at first, was not. But it would grow. I knew it would grow. It would grow into a black hole of destruction, because love led to rash thinking. Rash thinking led to rebellion. Rebellion led to punishment. And punishment meant death. It always did. I stopped cleaning for just a few seconds, the few seconds where they tricked the Capitol, tricked the world, and sealed their fate. Of course the next year, after I had almost forgotten everything and was preparing for the next batch of souls, they returned again. Why did they return again? They were going to die now, I knew that much. I didn't know that Darius knew her. I had long written conversations with him after the first day, how he told me about his past and what he did to deserve the punishment I took when I was so young. She was the Girl On Fire, he said. She always had been. I took my red hair in my hands, thinking that if my life had been normal, could I have deserved such a title? Could I have led a rebellion? I don't think so. I never understood the beauty of the Mockingjay. I just thought that it wasn't fair that they could sing and I couldn't anymore. They weren't punished like me. She was always a fighter, Darius wrote. She could save anyone if she knew that they were in trouble. She was too late for him. Too late for us. Peeta caught my eye as they took us away. He never wanted this. He never wanted this for anyone.

Five. The door I took. In the Hunger Games, the higher score, the better. In the Districts, it was the opposite. In death, the closest is always the easiest, but after everything we'd been through we weren't allowed to take the easiest way out. The fifth door led the way to death, and it is so horrible I wished I didn't count. Not knowing is always better in the end.

Despite everything, the flames didn't catch my hair. The inferno didn't reach us Avoxes, bottom of the Capitol. We weren't rescued. Only decimated. It wouldn't surprise me that after her fire burned to its peak from the ashes nothing remained. That the Capitol would extinguish the fire. They'd put out the fire being fueled by all the coal in District Twelve. They've stifled all means of rebellion for years. But somehow I think the coals will keep burning. There's always more of District Twelve. It can't be destroyed. The fire will keep on burning, right to the heart of the Capitol, the rose garden of hell where the devil Coriolanus resides. From the ashes our spirits shall rise and conquer those who pushed us to our deaths.

My name is Lavinia. I used to be an Avox. They pushed me through the fifth door of death, and now I am no more.

But I never really felt alive, anyway.


End file.
